"There is something happening, sir—"
"Cease fire."
"There, look, on the wall! They are milling about, seem to be fighting with each other."
It was true. First one body, then another, cartwheeled down from the wall to splash into the moat. A few moments later a length of gray cloth — it might generously be considered off-white — unrolled down the wall from the parapet above.
"Battle over," Toledano said, with no satisfaction. "They will rebuild the causeway so we can drive in, protected. I want no more deaths."
His name was Jostun and the computer translated his title as either village elder or council member. He was middle-aged and fat, but the sword he held was bloody. He stood in the middle of the rubble-filled square and waved its point at the building on the other side.
"Destroy it," he shouted. "With your explosions. Bring it down. The Gudaegin will die and the fiend of all of them, Azpi-oyal will die. You are our saviours. Do it!"
"No." Dr. Toledano snapped the answer, a flat, hard statement, understandable even before the computer could translate it. He stood alone, facing Jostun, so small he only came up to the other man's chest. But his command was undeniable. "You will join the others on the far side of the square. You will do it now."
"But we fought them for you. Helped you to win the city. We attacked the invaders by surprise and killed many of them. The survivors cower there. Kill—"
"The killing is over. This is now a time of peace. Go."
Jostun raised his hands to the sky, seeking a justice there that was being denied him here. Then he saw the waiting tanks again and he slumped, the sword dropping from his fingers and ringing on the flags. He went to the others. Toledano turned up the power on the amplifier and faced the sealed building.
"You have nothing to fear from me. Or from the people of this city. You know that I can destroy you in there. Now I ask you to come out and surrender and you have my promise you will not be harmed. Come out now."
As if to punctuate his words the large tank grated in a half circle on locked tread to point the gaping muzzle of its gun at the building. There was silence then, even the people of Uri were hushed and expectant, and the front door of the building squealed and opened. A man stepped out, tall, haughty, and alone. He wore a shining breastplate and helm, a sword held loosely at his side.
"Azpi-oyal!" a woman screamed, and the crowd stirred. Someone pushed through, leveling a taut cross bow. But the soldiers were ready. Gas grenades burst about the bowman and hid him from view. The bolt from the crossbow hurtled out, badly aimed, clattering from the stones of the square and slithering across almost to Azpi-oyal's feet. He ignored it and walked forward. The crowd moved back. He came up to Toledano, a muscular, dark-skinned man with a great black beard. Under the edge of his helm his eyes were cold.
"Give me your sword," Toledano said.
"Why? What will you do with me and my men? We may still die with honor like Gudaegin."
"You have no need to. No one will be harmed. Any who wish to leave may. We have made peace here and we will keep the peace."
"This was my city. When you attacked, these animals rebelled and took it from me. Will you return it to me?"
Toledano smiled coldly, admiring the man's hard nerve.
"I will not. It was not yours in the first place. It has now been returned to the people who live here."
"Where do you come from, little man, and what are you doing here? Do you dispute the right of the Gudaegin to the three continents? If you do you will never rest until you have killed us all. This city is one thing, our land is another."
"I want nothing that you have. Your lands or your fortunes. Nothing. We are here to make the sick well. We are here to show you how to contact other places, other worlds. We are here to change things, but only to make them better. Nothing that you value will be changed in any way."
Azpi-oyal weighed his sword in his hand and thought. He was not a stupid man. "We value the strength of our arms and our people. We mean to rule on the three continents. Will you take away our conquests?"
"Your past ones, no. But you will have no future ones. We cure disease and your kind of killing can be a disease. You will have to give it up. You will soon find that you do not miss it. As a first step on that road you will give me your sword." Toledano put out his tiny, almost child-size hand.
Azpi-oyal stepped back in anger, clutching the pommel. The turret on a tank squealed as it turned to follow him. He looked with hatred at the lowered muzzles of the guns — then burst out laughing. Tossing the sword into the air he caught it by the point and extended it to Toledano.
"I don't know whether to believe you or not, small conqueror. But I think I would like to live a little longer to see what you are going to do to the three continents. A man may always die."
The worst was over. Politically at least. They would now have a period of relative peace during which the tests and examinations could be made. A thousand years of isolation was a long time.
"We must get started," Toledano said, with sudden irritation, as he waved the radio operator to him. "Enough time has been wasted. Have the other units move up. We'll set up a base in this square here."
"The line is longer if anything," Jan said, looking out of the window. "Must be a hundred or more. It looks like the word has finally gotten out that we aren't doing terrible things to the citizens here, but are actually curing some of their ills."
They had occupied a large warehouse near the main gate and a medical aid station had been set up. There had been few volunteers for their glittering and exotic instruments at first, but they had enough involuntary patients among the wounded survivors of the fighting. Most of these had already been given up for dead. The crude local knowledge of medicine did not appear to go beyond bone setting, suturing of simple wounds, and amputation. The notion of antisepsis had stayed with them through the lost centuries, and they used alcohol as an antiseptic and boiled the bandages and instruments. But they had no way of treating infections — other than by amputation — so that death was the usual result of any deep, puncturing wound. The doctors had changed all that. None of their patients died. They healed abdominal wounds, repaired shattered limbs and heads, cured gangrene and other major infections, and even sewed back on a severed arm. This last seemed more miraculous than medical and soon the townspeople were flocking for treatment with almost religious enthusiasm.
"The waste, the absolute waste," Dr. Pidik said, giving the patient before him, a frightened girl, an injection of fungicide. "War first, that's where all the talent and energy goes, with medical care lagging ages behind. They have engineers, mechanics, builders. Did you see those steam ballistae? A pressure tank and miles of pipe and those piston-actuated things that dropped rocks right down the exhaust pipes of the tanks. You might think they could spare a miniscule amount of energy for some work on the healing arts."
The tall epidemiologist bent his blond head low, carefully cutting away dead tissue and swabbing out the wounds on the girl's monstrously swollen foot. It was twice its normal size, dark, knobby, decayed. There was no pain, the local anaesthetic took care of that, yet she was still terrified at what was happening.
"I've never seen anything like that at all," Jan said. "I don't believe there is even a reference in our text books."
"This is one of the diseases of neglect; you'll find it mentioned in the older texts. You'll see many things like this in the backwaters of the galaxy. It's maduromycosis. There is first a penetrating wound, common enough, that plants fungus spores deep inside the flesh. If untreated this is the result after a course of years."